"Batman: Arkham Asylum" (Eidos) promises to be a purposely creepy action-adventure, where you are Batman, making your way around an asylum full of Batty villains, from the Joker to Harley Quinn and beyond. You beat up mean people and save nice people during mini-missions, but you also use fingerprint scanners and other technology to figure out mysteries perpetrated by the bad guys.

The game's original stories were written by "Batman" writer Paul Dini. And as GameSpy.com columnist Ryan Scott observantly noted, "Asylum" reminds him of four threads from the "Batman" universe: the graphic novel "Arkham Asylum" obviously, plus the close-up villain-stalking from the film "Batman Begins, " Dini's "Batman: Detective" series and "Batman: The Animated Series." Speaking of "The Animated Series, " the game's voice acting comes from that TV show's stars. Batman is voiced by fan favorite Kevin Conroy; the Joker, by Mark Hamill; and Harley Quinn, by Arleen Sorkin. It's gotten hard to tell in advance whether certain comic book games will be good, but video previews of this game's cinematic scenes are impressive. And this "Batman" comes from the super dependable game-maker Eidos. The game, to be released Tuesday, retails for $60 for Xbox 360 and PS 3. It's rated "T" for alcohol, tobacco reference, blood, mild language, suggestive themes and violence.

"Raven Squad: Hidden Dagger" (South Peak Interactive) is a good idea for a game. It's a genre-bender of a real-time shooting-strategy game. The action takes place on a battlefield in jungles and villages in the southern hemisphere. You can play the game all the way as a first-person shooter, swapping which player to portray among eight soldiers. Or you can play the game as a real-time strategy game, where the omniscient point-of-view is from above, as you control a unit of four long-range soldiers and a unit of four up-close aggressors. Obviously, a lot of gamers will play "Raven Squad" as both a shooter and a strategy game, by using the view from above to get an advance look at bad guys hiding in and behind buildings and such -- then switching to first-person shooter to fire bullets at those bad guys. You also can play "Raven Squad" in cooperative mode, including online, where you and a buddy each control one of those two units. The game, which was released Tuesday, retails for $50 for Xbox 360 and $40 for PC. It's rated "T" for alcohol reference, mild language and violence.